What America should have done was to invade Afghanistan, concentrate on killing all of the Al Qaida leadership, wipe out as much of its rank-and-file as we could, continue to contain Saddam, and use our resources and military to eliminate our REAL enemies--radical, violent Islamic fundamentalist militants around the world. A parallel goal should be to use the tens of billions of dollars Bush is sending to Iraq to rebuild America's infrastructure to make us more competitive with the rest of the world. While we are apparently concentrated on more foreign conquests and keeping Iraq from exploding in Civil War, China is growing its economy by leaps and bounds. If we don't start getting our domestic house in order, we may find the Chinese getting way ahead of us.
Here is an interview by The Los Angeles Weekly with Ret. Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski concerning her personal interactions with the neocons and her personal experience of their work inside the pentagon in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php I have also included a video of her eye opening talk with an interviewer at Cal State Pomona on the same subject. http://www.video.csupomona.edu/streaming/inc/ht_index.html I think you will find the perceptions of a career military intelligence officer to be interesting, to say the least.
A very interesting article from laweekly. Scarey. What this former Army colonel says is that the neocons want to use the American military to further American interests, and we were not under any threat. Lying to start a war is the moral equivalent of treason.
<What this former Army colonel says is that the neocons want to use the American military to further American interests, and we were not under any threat.> That part IS kinda hard to wrap your mind around at first, but once you begin to familiarize yourself with the neocon historical perspective you realize that using a strong and aggressive military as a foreign policy tool is actually one of the basic tenets of neoconservatism, and can be found in just about any mainstream article about neoconservatve philosophy. What I find most compelling, however, is where she explains how Òthey developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon to try and make this case of immediacy,Ó and also where she explains their real reasons for ousting Saddam. "The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress. The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq. One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit. The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter, to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important, that is, if you hold that is AmericaÕs role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in. The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000, selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program arenÕt very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro. The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but itÕs not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on IraqÕs oil back to the dollar." Lt. Col Kwiatkowski further explains that they KNEW in The Office of Special Plans that there were no WMD in Iraq long before Powell made his pitch to the U.N. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/13/news-cooper.php Bear in mind that this career military intelligence officer has been a lifelong conservative Republican, but she is very focused and dedicated to getting the truth out and is not afraid who knows it.
I realize that it will be a political football until then, but hopefully after Scott Ritter testifies in front of the WMD intelligence probe, we will have a clearer idea exactly what Bush's neocons in the defense department really knew to be the truth about the existence of WMD in Iraq and how many months before the invasion of Iraq they knew it. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37043
Have the neocons turned the GOP into the War Party? First the real old school conservative publications like The American Conservative make the accusation that the neocon cabal at the center of the current administration's foreign policy is a Zionist plot inside the American govt. with Israel’s national interests placed before our own, and now the “conservative” periodicals all seem to be pointing to the “liberal press” as the originators of that charge. It seems that in today’s conservative political world, what is up is down and what is left is right, and truth is no longer as important as the current spin. Has the Republican party actually been hijacked by the neocons and subsequently been turned into “The War Party” whose long term foreign policy is a plan of "continual war for peace?" "The conservative movement has been hijacked and turned into a globalist, interventionist, open borders ideology, which is not the conservative movement I grew up with" -Pat Buchanan, NY Times, Sept 8, 2002 http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html http://www.theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/794ebwmq.asp?pg=2 http://www.townhall.com/columnists/joelmowbray/jm20030527.shtml
Phatcat, you are agreeing with Pat Buchanan on foreign policy issues? Think about that long and hard. Buchanan is more than just a paleo-con and a far-right nutcase. He is an isolationist, who wants the U.S. out of the U.N. and a drastic reduction in U.S. military presence overseas, and of course, throwing Israel (along with Taiwan, South Korea, and the entire Middle East) to the wolves. I was once actually in pretty firm agreement with his ideas on foreign policy. It took Sept. 11th to change my mind and make me realize that the U.S. has enemies and that those enemies absolutely will not stop until we are all dead, and that ignoring threats won't make them go away. The boogeymen are real this time. That's the truth.
Why the obsession with neo-conservatives? Let me warn you, you get too far into this, and you risk being call anti-semitic.
Now, MOM, let's not do like CB66 and start tossing out labels without justification. I'm as ardent a supporter of Israel as you will find anywhere, and I believe continued U.S. sponsorship and protection of Israel is absolutely vital to U.S. interests in the Middle East, but I have found people who disagree with my position who are not anti-Semites and do not have pathological hatred of Jews and Israel. Some are merely isolationists, and I suspect, since phatcat's on here quoting Pat Buchanan, that he may be one. Some merely have a poor understanding of how things really are over there and need to be educated. Very few people in the U.S. (relatively speaking) want the U.S. to abandon Israel because they gleefully look forward to the Islamic world finishing what Hitler started, and those that do are mostly fringe leftists or fringe rightists who are just playing to the most vile and base of human instinct. Legitimate criticism of the U.S./Israeli "special relationship" is just fine though.
Jetstorm, that honestly was not a jab at your or anyone in particular at all. Just a warning to phatcat who apparently just discovered the term, neocon, and has become obsessed with it to the point of furiously linking every article he can find on the subject. The definition of neocon in my dictionary is a Jewish American who is willing to sacrifice his or her traditional left-wing views on social policy for a perceived greater good, the protection of Israel at any and all cost to America, and has aligned particularly with the Republican party to push that one overriding goal. Now, if that's anti-Semitic of me, so be it, I'm just calling it as I see it.
